In a short span, a director and possibly a cinematographer must conceive, map out, block, shoot, and edit incredibly competently in order to pull off a truly memorable and effective ad. The effort is high. The stakes? Well, they are not very significant, the air time they fill is usually skipped over or reserved for a visit to the bathroom.
A beacon in the darkness, Superbowl hype has allowed a narrow gap for ad agencies to put their best foot forward, a single night every year when people actually care about the ads. Standing out is another matter, most ads opting for attractive women degrading themselves, random celebrity cameos, or people falling down for comedic effect. It’s the typical clichés and arbitrary grab bag of ideas that seemingly anyone could make by simply throwing darts blindly at an ad exec’s wall. The finished products, as amusing as they can be, contain as many empty calories as the junk food they are designed to sell.
Stanley Kubrick’s Filmmaking 101
Director Stanley Kubrick, a photography nut from an early age, was agonizingly keen on the art of cinematography, a theme that ran through every project he ever made, from the prehistoric monolith shot in2001: A Space Odyssey, to the delicate composition of guerrilla warfare inFull Metal Jacket. According to him, the only unique contribution to the arts that movies ever delivered was editing, each new angle offering a different character’s perspective, many parts of the whole narrative densely stuck together to convey an emotion or theme in a fluid series of images.
To getthe mise-en-scene and lightingcorrect, Kubrick would refilm, re-edit, and even order special lenses from NASA to cobble together his own cameras to film more natural shots in extremely low light, ditching the hackneyed day-for-night technique. Yet for an innovator, he found inspiration in the most unlikely of places.
Living abroad, he had the tapes of weeks-old NFL games air-mailed to his house in Britain, allowing him all the time he wished to study the nuances of the event. What caught his eye was not of the offensive plays but of the beer adverts, Kubrick singling out the Michelob spots in loving detail:
“Forget what they’re doing — selling beer — and it’s visual poetry. Incredible eight-frame cuts. And you realize that in thirty seconds they’ve created an impression of something rather complex. If you could ever tell a story, something with some content, using that kind of visual poetry, you could handle vastly more complex and subtle material.”
There are certain things only a genius could get away with saying, and this was one of them. But in his mind, it was never about the product, but how a montage expresses the subject, in this case, what the product means on many psychological and social levels to consumers.
The director is likely referencing “The Night Belongs to Michelob” advertising campaign of the late eighties which featured licensed rock songs and quick shots of movements, slickly-edited together to show yuppies at play. For Kubrick, the very same constraints that hampered them (the limitations that forced commercials into meager thirty-second slots, pancaked one on top of the other unceremoniously) were what made them great. They needed to be clear to understand without ever uttering a word or being too blunt. They needed to be universally coherent, yet differentiate themselves from the glut of mindless racket. Considering his obsession with detail, his affection is no small compliment. Sadly, film scholars are still in search of Kubrick’s critical analysis on Spuds MacKenzie and the Budweiser frogs.
Stanley Kubrick Called Eyes Wide Shut His Greatest Contribution to Cinema, Why Is It Largely Ignored?
Ignore the naysayers; Eyes Wide Shut is every bit an equal to 2001 and The Shining.
The “Greatest Commercial” Almost Got Rejected
The soaring praise heaped on the beer ads in the eighties was due to the work of dozens of talented TV and ad directors, pushing ads forward,directors like Ridley Scott. Oh, and he made some pretty good films too. Before mastering the art of the chest-bursting Xenomorph inAlien, or perfecting an iconic cinematic art style inBlade Runner, Scott labored thanklessly without his name front and center in the opening credits. The job of an ad director is a precarious one, but, in certain circumstances (looking at you, Michael Bay), a director with a keen eye and sense of timing can get the call up to the major leagues, catapulting them onto the next level.
Scott would make a triumphant return in 1984 with his now legendary (yes, we just called a commercial legendary) Macintosh commercial known as “1984.” The ad is less effective for explaining the product or its usefulness than it is for sheer production value, flashy movie-like imagery, and an appeal to highbrow, literary references, the narrator promising prospective customers that “1984 won’t be like ‘1984.'” The commercial is perfect in execution except for an end title card mistitling the George Orwell dystopian novelNineteen Eighty-Fourto save space on the screen.
Dreamed up by the Chiat/Day ad agency, they harangued Ridley Scott to direct. It’s ads like these that show the problem with ambitious commercials that transcend their usual role as glorified, pixellated billboards. With high-concepts and high-production value comes a high budget. Directors, lighting, studio rentals, editors, effects, and extras ain’t cheap.
Initial reactions so shocked Apple execs they nearly scrapped the ad due to a then-astronomical budget, Apple was still a largely obscure player in American culture without a cult of fans in tow expecting the glossy ad treatment. Safe to say, they made the right choice, regardless of the $900,000 price tag, that sum coming to about 2.6 million in today’s money. Based on the 38-9 beatdown of Washington by the Raiders, that ad was the only dramatic moment of the whole day.
20 Famous Actors Who Got Their Start in Commercials
Everybody has to start somewhere. Here are the biggest names in Hollywood to get their start promoting brands in national and regional commercials.
Who Needs an Oscar When You Have Car Ads?
No strangers to the art of the Superbowl ad, the Coen Brothers’s 2017 “Easy Driver” ad borrowed from the iconography and legacy of the filmEasy Riderto convince baby boomers to pay out for a new Mercedes-Benz. This was hardly their first foray into the advertising space, creating an earlier ad for a tax-filing service in 2002 for the NFL championship game. That same year also saw the debut ofFriday Night Lightsdirector Peter Berg’s 2017 Hyundai promo.
Not to be left out, two-time Oscar winner for Best Art Direction, Robert Stromberg, took up the challenge thrown down by the masters before him, relishing the burden of crafting the Mercedez-Benz spot. Okay, let’s not get goosebumps just yet, they’re just hyping overpriced German cars with faulty fuel pumps, but these directors’ interest shows that the normally mundane medium of the 30-second commercial still holds allure for artists to flex their muscles and branch out.
For those learning the craft, there is no better school for mastering the foundations of filmmaking. In the case of some directors, their diversion into TV commercials might be the most impressive work on their resume. Most directors will never maketheir ownCitizen Kane. Fewer will craft a thirty-second ad that embeds itself in people’s heads for forty years. Both are quite an accomplishment when you think about it.
